The Internet - The Global Village
I love the internet. I love being able to speak to people from all over this country and all over the world. I have friends in a dozen countries and even more states. We can talk on the relative merits of football vs. soccer, best vacation sites, best scuba diving, the latest episode of Survivor, etc.

I love that I get to pick my friends by what they enjoy rather than happenstance and physical location. That is not to say that we agree on everything, that would be boring, but with many of them I know we have been to some of the same places, read the same books, watched the same movies, etc. etc.

The downside is that, just as you think of these people as friends and almost family, the distance becomes most apparent. You cannot pop by their house and drop off a bowl of soup when they are sick, pick their kids up from school if they are in a jam, or even give them a hug when they are feeling down.

This physical distance, paired with intellectual closeness is difficult for the mind to process logically, and it makes me wonder what other challenges our reptile brains will have to deal with in the next 50 to 100 years.

Of course the good part is that you can be as big an asshole as you ever wanted to be (and can't or you would get fired) and no one can reach across cyberspace and give you a well deserved spanking. Or maybe that isn't the good part...I forget.